Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Wow, this is the first day that Hillary has been at State without her sling! Awww and I was just starting to get used to her State Department sling as a great accessory to her pantsuits....

Well, sling or no sling here is the round up of todays bilaterals. In addition to attending the President’s bilateral with His Excellency Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, at the White House, the Secretary delivered remarks with Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen of the Netherlands at the State Department.

During the briefing the Secretary said this to the press:

"Today, I am privileged once again to host the foreign minister of the Netherlands. We had an excellent meeting with the prime minister and the President in the Oval Office today. The Dutch and the Dutch Government are among our greatest friends and allies on so many important matters. And we had a very broad-ranging discussion on a number of critical issues this morning, which we will get into even more depth on again this afternoon. So I welcome Maxime back to the State Department."

Foreign Minister Verhagen responded:

"Thank you very much indeed, Hillary. I would like to thank Madame Secretary for her warm hospitality. Indeed, we had very good discussions this morning, the President and my prime minister. And we will continue to discuss on these issues.

We share a lot of values and we have a lot in common, a common history for 400 years, as the first Dutchman landed on the shores of Manhattan. And we’ve also seen this morning, in the discussions between the prime minister and the President, that on issues like the Middle East, like Afghanistan, we have a lot to do in common. We share the same challenges, but we have also the same ideas on how to deal with these issues."

Secretary Clinton also gave remarks with Latvian Foreign Minister Maris Riekstins before their meeting.

Secretary Clinton said this on the Foreign Minister of Latvia:

"I’m very grateful for the extraordinary support and assistance that Latvia has provided on many issues that are of importance to us mutually, and I’m delighted to receive him for the purpose of going in depth into a range of issues that are concerns to us. We are partners in NATO; we are partners in so many of the security issues. We know that Latvia is facing a very challenging economic time and we look forward to discussing ways that we can work more closely together."